Problem Understanding
Restate the problem in your own words.
Design Airbnb (Booking System)
Design an Airbnb-class booking platform: guests search for listings by location, date range, guest count, and filters; view a listing with availability, photos, and price; and book a date range (instant-book or request-to-book) with a payment saga that holds funds until check-in. Hosts manage calendars and sync them with external iCal feeds (Booking.com, Vrbo). The decisive trade-offs are interval-vs-per-day availability storage, optimistic-vs-pessimistic booking locks, and pre-compute-vs-compute-on-read pricing. Search and listing reads dominate volume; bookings are write-light but absolutely cannot double-book.
- AirbnbThe canonical home-share platform; ~7 M listings, ~150 M users.
- VrboVacation rentals; same shape, host-managed; Expedia-owned.
- Booking.comHotels + apartments; multi-property hosts; calendar-feed driven.
- Agoda / Hotels.comOTA distribution; both consume and produce iCal feeds.
Your task: read the problem above, then write what the system is, who uses it, the rough scale, and the headline UX expectation — in your own words. Submit for AI review when you're ready.
Click any step in the sidebar to jump around — sections don't have to be done in order. Press ? any time to see all shortcuts.